Balance4 - Power Broker Balancing
Program

The Power Broker Balance Program is a utility used
to find month end outages. This utility has the commands
that Power Broker technical support staff use to find
discrepancies, but with a more friendly user interface,
allowing you, the user, to solve month end outages on
your own. This program was generated as a project by a
systems analyst with the help of a programmer, and
although all the features work fine, there still may be
some errors with flipping back to menus you have already
visited so sometimes it's just better to start from the
icon and work your way back to the test you were
attempting.

If you already have an earlier
version of Balance installed, then please first go to
Add/Remove Programs in your Start, Control Panel, and
uninstall the previous version.

Install the
balance file to the default installation directory
C:\BALANCE4

Launch Instructions:

On your
desktop, right click on a blank area, choose 'New' and
then 'Shortcut' and browse to C:\BALANCE4\BALANCE4.EXE .

Select Apply.

Double click your new desktop
icon.

Preperation Instructions:Exclusive
Database:It's important to note that the 'Copy Files
Procedure' be done when everyone is out of Power
Broker. As soon as this procedure has completed ( this
procedure can take 10 seconds for small offices, and 2
minutes for the largest ones), then everyone can go back
into Power Broker. You would then proceed with running
the Balance test and be able to work freely because you
are using a 'copy' of the files and not the ones on the
server.

Since you are using the BALANCE program,
it's already assumed that your out of balance. You will
need to copy several accounting files to find your
outage. Once you have found your outage, and made your
corrections in Power Broker, you would then re-copy your
files again using this procedure and then run whatever
test found your initial outage.

Should you copy
these files, then get side-tracked by a customer or a
telephone call, and then come back to the BALANCE
program, the question would be ' do I need to copy these
files again?'. It's important to know that you DO NOT
need to copy the files every time you enter the program.
Doing so may disrupt the live version that everyone is
working on.

NOTE: The month to be balanced should
be closed, or else files must be copied immediately
after running End of Day Processing each time you want
to run the balancing tests.

Copy Files
Instructions:Click on 'Copy Files Procedure' to copy
the files from the \BRO directory on your server to your
new C:\BALANCE directory located on your workstation. At
the bottom, choose the drive (In this test, we choose W)
and then the BRO folder, and then select.

You
should now see the files copy over. Click into the
screen once, and then click OK to continue.

It is at this stage that everyone can log back into
Power Broker and continue working while you proceed with
packing the cloned data, and continue with your
balancing tests.

This will then bring you into
the list of tests that you may pick.

List of Test
options:Although the tests have been listed from 1
through 4, we are going to skip number 1 which would be
the most popular of all of the tests until last. The
reason for this is because test 2, 3, and 4 can be
completed much quicker, and you may find simple
solutions to your outage by running these first.

Test 2: Part 1 of this test will identify/confirm
the trial balance outage, where total debits do not
equal total credits.

Test 2B: This test uses the
general ledger detail records allowing you to pin-point
the precise date(s) and entry(s) of the outage. Reports
are available to assist you in comparing debits to
credits. Once problem entry(s) has been identified, you
would delete entry and redo.

Test 3: This test
will identify any missing customers for which you have
accounting transactions. A list is displayed on screen.
You would then proceed to re-add these customers with
the exact same customer code so that the accounting
transactions would re-associate with customer. Once
missing customer(s) have been re-added, reprint the
Accounts Receivable Listing to check balance with
Accounts Receivable Agency Bill general ledger balance.

Test 4: This test will identify any general ledger
accounts missing from chart of accounts for which you
have posted entries. Add these accounts back into the
Chart of Accounts table and then reprint the Trial
Balance to check whether total debits equal total
credits.Test 1: What if my Accounts Receivable
Listing By Customer total does not agree to the General
Ledger balance for the Accounts Receivable account as
shown on the Balance Sheet or Trial Balance.

Project Balance Example:Imagine that in the month of
October, you had an A/R outage and you needed to find
this outage.

In step 2, you would provide your
A/R GL Code

In Step 3, you would provide your
branch code or leave BLANK if you do not use branch
codes.

In Step 5, you would provide an entire
month time span.

Click on 'Show Outage'

If
Step 9 displays a '0.00' value, then your not out of
balance in this area.

If you actually have a
value in the outage box ( imagine $500 for this example
), then this would be what you need to do more
investigation on.

To narrow down the outage, you
would click on 'RESET VALUES' and return to step 4.

Questions:Question: Ok so now that I know I have an October
out of balance problem, how do I find where and when
this happened?The general concept of how to find
this $500 outage or any other outage you encounter is of
narrowing down the search fields to a shorter span of
time. To do so, you need to break down the time frame
from the 31 days into weeks, and then days. So to do
this, type in the first two weeks of October to check
balance.

After you type in your new dates, you
will need to re-click all of the buttons , Step 6, 7, 8,
and 9 in this screen capture to show you your outage for
the first two weeks of October.

Imagine that you
find the same value as you did before ( $500 ), then you
would know that if you 'Reset Values' and did the same
test over again but using October 16 to 31, your show
outage would be at 0.00.

To narrow down where the
outage was for the $500, you would repeat the previous
examples over and over again, changing the dates until
you found what days you had an outage on and for how
much. The $500 example we used may be more than one
transaction so you will have to look for that.

In
this example, we found the example $500 outage on
10/06/2006Please write this down on some paper.

Click on EXIT at the TOP right of the page

TEST 1BOn the next page, type in the date and
enter your A/R GL Code.

Click on Limit by Date in
Grid 1 and in Grid 2

This should bring up
whatever was out of balance in either of the two grids.

Should you be looking for an individual amount in a
specific time frame, this can also be achieved by
entering a date in the date field, typing in your A/R GL
Code, and at the bottom of the page, you may enter these
values:

This feature will allow you to print any
of your findings.

What do you do when you
find your outage?

If you find the outage in
the Grid 1 - Custtran spreadsheet, this indicates that
something posted to the customer sub-ledger, but not to
the Accounts Receivable Agency Bill control account.

You would need to reverse this entry at the customer
sub-ledger level following these steps:

Note: If
when you first enter the Seed Customer Account
Receivable Balances screen, you find some transactions
already listed in the window, these are Cash Receipts
that either you or someone else from your brokerage has
entered. These entries must be posted via Post Cash
Receipts Batch before you begin seeding.

1)
Ensure that you know when your last month closed is
before proceeding2) Go to Utilities, Seed Customer
Receivable Balances3) Add one line4) Entry
should be dated last month closed date. 5) Complete
fields for customer code, policy number, balance amount
that you found was the problem, and then the branch if
it's applicable to you.

NOTE: the amount to
enter is the reversing amount of entry found. If the
value is a positive(+) in Grid 1 - Custtran, the value
of your seeded entry should be a negative(-).

If
the value is a negative(-) in Grid 1 - Custtran, the
value of your seeded entry should be a positive(+).

6) You would choose 'Print' and then 'Post' at the
top of your screen. NOTE: Exclusive Database use
required to Post.

7) Once the seeded entry has
been posted, you would need to redo whatever transaction
you originally had a problem with.

If you
find your outage in Grid 2 - GL_Open spreadsheet, it
indicates that an entry posted to the Accounts
Receivable Agency Bill general ledger account, but not
to the customer. This one-sided entry could be an
invoice, a cheque, a journal entry, or a cash receipt.
Track down what you did, delete it and then do the
transaction over again. If the month is closed, of where
the problem is, it is possible to re-open a month to
delete original entry and make correction. See Help page
associated with Enter Fiscal Periods – Utilities menu.
Should you decide not to re-open, you would need to seed
the missing entry to the customer via Seed Customer
Receivable Balances as in Grid 1 outage above.

The remaining tests listed on the main screen are
all tremendously useful and have their own instructions.
If you are out of balance, consider these tests to help
identify the cause of your outage.

Test 2: Part 1
of this test will identify/confirm the trial balance
outage, where total debits do not equal total credits.

Part 2 of this test uses the general ledger
detail records allowing you to pin-point the precise
date(s) and entry(s) of the outage. Reports are
available to assist you in comparing debits to credits.
Once problem entry(s) has been identified, you would
delete entry and redo.

Test 3: This test will
identify any missing customers for which you have
accounting transactions. A list is displayed on screen.
You would then proceed to re-add these customers with
the exact same customer code so that the accounting
transactions would re-associate with customer. Once
missing customer(s) have been re-added, reprint the
Accounts Receivable Listing to check balance with
Accounts Receivable Agency Bill general ledger balance.

Test 4: This test will identify any general ledger
accounts missing from chart of accounts for which you
have posted entries. Add these accounts back into the
Chart of Accounts table and then reprint the Trial
Balance to check whether total debits equal total
credits.

Test 5: Bank Reconciliation This
feature allows you to go online, download a month's
worth of banking transactions to c:\balance with the
specific name RAWDATA.CSV in the format of 'comma
deliminated' format and to compare the transactions from
Power Brokers by running the Print Bank Reconciliation,
and running the 'Copy Files' procedure found on the
first page of the Balance program.

Sort either
grid by any of the columns by clicking on the header
name, and then marking/deleting the items in both grids
leaving values that need further research.

There
is a 'reset' option if the you make an error, and a
'Load' feature to re-populate the grid.

Once an
item is marked for deletion, the 'Clear Selected Items'
will wipe out both lines selected in both grids.
Multiple lines may be selected, clearing multiple lines
out. You may un-select an item if it's been shaded by
clicking on it again to un-shade it.

Clicking the
top left of the grid automatically adjusts each grid's
row to a 'Size fits all' width, yet the typical 'Click
and Drag' a row to make it wider applies.

There is a 'rawdata.csv' sample file that is included
with the original install, but is overwritten by the
customer when they download and save the new rawdata.csv
file into the c:\balance folder.